'Private telcos have invested heavily; they need returns too'

livemint.com:

₹4.26 trillion over the last two financial years and rolled out 5G networks in record speed require some return on capital. “In 21 months, 5G has been rolled out, 450,000 base stations have been set up. Telcos have spent close to ₹4.26 trillion in the last two fiscals.

There has to be a return on that," Scindia said in an interview, adding this is the first tariff hike in the telecom sector in three years. Voice tariff that stood at 0.53 paise per minute in 2014 came down to 0.03 paise, before inching up to 0.033 paise now, he said. Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea raised tariffs in June this year, their third since 2019, which took up the average tariff for consumers by 10-21%.

Telcos also began charging for entry-level 5G plans. Scindia said that despite the hike, India’s data and voice tariffs were among the lowest in the world, with data plans in developed markets like the US as high as $40 a month. The government will also look at introducing a revamped production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the telecom sector with higher incentives for designing equipment in India across the value chain.

The present scheme only offers incentives for the finished product. “We're trying to make sure that the whole value chain gets captured here and the value addition, even in R&D, gets captured in India. There has to be an incentive for you to do it here, which is why we're looking at that," he said.